Brown defends election decision

Sunday 7 January 2007 00:10 BST

A general election is "very unlikely" to be called in the next year, Gordon Brown indicated as he defended his decision to kill off the possibility of an autumn poll.

The Prime Minister insisted he had not been scared off a quick election by new opinion polls giving the Tories enough of a lead to wipe out his Commons majority. He had a public duty to consider demands for him to go to the country early, he insisted, but had decided it was better to give voters time to see his long-term "vision" in action.

Asked if he could now rule out a poll next spring or autumn as well, Mr Brown told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show: "It's not likely that we'll have an election."

Pressed on whether he was ruling out a vote "for a long time to come", he said: "I think it's very unlikely that this will happen in the next period. I think the important thing is that we get on with the business of change in this country because people do want change and I am responding to that demand."

Mr Brown used the interview conducted on Saturday afternoon to make his dramatic move to end fevered speculation about an autumn election. He was immediately hit by virulent criticism from rivals, David Cameron accusing him of making a "humiliating retreat" that showed "great weakness and indecision".

And he and Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell accused him of putting party politics above the national interest by doing nothing to quell the expectations.

But Mr Brown rejected such charges, telling the BBC: "The question I asked myself in the end was a more fundamental one: why am I in public life; what am I here to do? And I think I have a duty to set out my vision for the future."

He said he could have called an election based on his "competence" at dealing with a string of crises over the summer - and which had helped push him to a massive poll lead.

"But what I want to do is show people the vision that we have for the future of this country in housing and health and education and I want the chance, in the next phase of my premiership, to develop and show people the policies that are going to make a huge difference and show the change in the country itself," he said.

The PM insisted that Labour would have been victorious at the ballot box "today, next week or weeks after" despite a News of the World poll putting his party six points behind among voters in key marginal constituencies. He also said he was "relishing" the chance of taking on the Tories over the tax policies announced at their party conference which helped spark their own resurgence.